


knockout

by slainism



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: M/M, i'm sorry for putting this trash in the tags ahhh, lies on floor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-21 23:27:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3707387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slainism/pseuds/slainism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>hide and kaneki meet, become friends and fall in love. but love is not without complications.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Hide digs his foot gently into the ground, staring as he makes small dentures in the surface of the ground. His phone gently vibrates, and Hide takes it out of his pocket, looking at the time.

 _13:40_.

He should be here soon.

The park had been around since long before he'd moved to the 20th ward and, although the years had carefully eroded away at the edges, it's still, he notes with surprise, vastly the same. The swing's paint is still chipped and discoloured. The round about is still dangerously unsteady, and as a result is rarely used. The lock on the gate of the park is still battered and the long metallic slide had the same large cavities on its surface as it had back in Hide's childhood.

Yet despite its lack of size or care, Hide couldn't bring himself to leave it. It simply held too many precious memories for him; of johnson grass and rabbit tobacco tickling at his toes; of wilted clothes and punnets of sakura mochi; of wishing the summer days were longer because there was never enough time.

“I'm here,” a quiet voice announces. He stiffens. Just the one he had been waiting for.

Time could be kind to objects, but never to people. It had been years since the two of them had met like this. The Kaneki in front of him smiled sheepishly, rubbing at his nose with the palm of his hand. His gaze is different though, and Hide can barely bring himself to acknowledge it. It's sharper and different, and shares none of the warmth it used to. Looking at him now, his stomach twists sharply.

It was on purpose that Hide decided to meet at this park of all places. He's sure that even now, the significance of the place isn't lost on the man. Clearing his throat, Hide wills his lips to form the words that should have been shared between them years ago.

~ This chain of events started eight years prior. ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to ericha for beta'ing this! you are the raddest :D


	2. Chapter 2

It was the summer that Hide turned twelve that the Nagachika family migrated to the 20th ward.

It was a change which appeared out of the blue; there was no sign in the past twelve years of Hide's life that his parents wanted to move elsewhere. Even at a young age, he recognised the fact that his mother and father aren't really the adventurous type. Spontaneous change was unwelcome to them. That's why when his parents finally informed him of their plans to migrate, Hide found himself gaping at the pair in confusion.

After all, the Nagachika household was a simple one - they paid their taxes early, they arrived every where tidy and on time and they understood how to behave in public. His mother and father gained repute for their hard working and respectable nature.

Through some kind of mystic strike of misfortune, Hide was the polar opposite.

"Rowdy children," his mother started one day, when Hide had failed to complete a sheet of homework, "very rarely get anywhere in life." She then aimed a harsh stare at him. Lowering his eyes to the ground, Hide slumped his shoulders sheepishly.

It's not uncommon for his mother to make such remarks. There was never any use in attempting to defend himself from these verbal onslaughts, mostly because they were all true.

It _was_ gruelling, after all, trying to get Hide to focus on his homework long enough to finish it. It wasn't intentional but somewhere along the way of scrawling on his worksheet, his focus dissolves into directionless day dreams. He ends up scribbling whole pages worth of random words in large bold font on the back of his work sheet, or sometimes, he crafts his paper into little swans and stars, and then he'd arrange it all into small compositions

By the time his mother enters the room to check on his progress, there's always more blank than filled spaces on the sheet, and Hide's always dizzy with images of fluttering birds, glaring stars and chunky kanji. It wasn't all that surprising either, that his grades for all subjects he didn't like were subpar.

"Such a nuisance," His mother would always shake her head disapprovingly before punishing him.

Leaving behind his hold home was a mixed prospect for him. On one hand, there's so much the 20th ward had to offer him, a cornucopia of uncharted land and unseen faces. There's new backstreets and alleys to explore, new quirks and places to see.

But he misses his old life. He misses sitting in the bewhiskered barley fields, the headphones positioned at his ears blaring over the howl of the wind. He misses lying by the local river, letting its chill lap gently at his toes and the sun kiss his cheeks.

He misses visiting the izakaya with his parents every Friday evening, listening to the adult's hearty banter. And above all, he misses his friends. He shakes his head. It's difficult coming to terms with the fact that he'd never be able to fully be with those friends the way he had previous years. And even more difficult knowing that he wouldn't be able to meet any of them face to face at least until the next summer vacation. The only comfort he could cling to was a small slip of paper with his friend's numbers written neatly onto it, which he'd tucked safely into a little box on his desk.

"Cheer up, Hide," his father says one day, noticing the gloomy look on his face as he thought about this. "Once you start school, you'll make lots of new friends."

"Yeah..." Hide traces around the numbers on the paper mournfully. "You're right. I think."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to cece for being a big help re: proofreading and criticism!


	3. Chapter 3

The date when Hide would start at his new school was rapidly approaching, but it soon went on the back-burner; it wasn't that he didn't care about school. It was just...he never realised how _fascinating_ a neighbourhood could be. Someone had to keep an eye on the neighbourhood, and he ended up noting a bunch of things about the area.

One, his neighbours were strange characters. Looking out of his window each morning, Hide had seen several of the people who lived around him go about their day to day business. With little to do, he watched them all more closely, noting their appearance and how they conducted themselves. He even assigned nicknames to the people he was most fascinated with.

One of those people was an old woman, dubbed “the Spinster”, who would hobble out of the house adjacent to his. Every day, she wears a strange collection of coats with no mind to the temperature outside, and always leaves the house at exactly 9:00am. Hide never, in his week of spying on her, saw when she returned home.

Then there was another character, a remarkably tall man, dubbed “top hat”. The time he left the house varied from day to day, but it's always sometime in the afternoon. When Hide did see him leave, he always looks quite jovial, even when it was miserable and cloudy outside.

Although neither neighbour quite captured Hide's attention the way “Leather man” did.

Ironically, the neighbour which captivates him most is the one who he actually sees the _least_. Although, when he thinks about it, it was the lack of activity that went on inside this house which probably piqued his curiosity to begin with. The...man lives inside a terraced house with a short porch which was adorned with a disarray of bright and colourful flowers, a few houses opposite him. Looking from the outside, the house looks identical to the ones it was conjoined with; it seems completely normal.

The man who lived inside of it does not.

Hide didn't get to indulge in the luxury of seeing the man often – this person, whoever he was, never seemed to leave the house. Not reclusive enough to be considered a hikikomori, but enough to be strange.

In a way, Hide could see why this man rarely left the house – the rare time he emerged, it was wearing something that most would consider unacceptable wearing _privately_ , letting alone braving into the public eye with it! The rags that the man was always dressed in was just that – rags. He wore some variation of torn and muddied denim or leather on his legs, (hence “Leather man”) whilst his shirt could be anything so long as the colours were bright and clashing. His hair had long departed from its natural colour too; Hide couldn't count all the colours there. It was red, blended into an electric magenta, blended into a vivid violet before turning into a light blue nearer the roots.

Everything about him was....so... _strange_.

Without realising, he lost all the interest he had in Top Hat and the Spinster and now in all of his neighbour spying activities, he sought this new man out exclusively to little avail. Upping the frequency of his spying didn't helped his chances at all. The man remained an enigma and Hide remained inquisitive.

The second thing Hide notices about his area was that near this new house the Nagachika family had moved to, there was a small and compact park which was only a five minute walk away. It was equipped with a small arsenal of climbing frames, slides and other childish impedimenta. There was an advantage that it ran adjacent to a line of cornershops, which in turn were loaded with cheap soft drinks.

It wasn't really the best park Hide had seen, but it was good enough and conveniently nearby.

“I think I, um, want to go to that park near us today,” Hide says carefully as his mother comes downstairs. “I really want to, uh, see the area!”

“That's fine." Her voice is calm for a morning.

Before leaving, she hands him a sandwich and kisses his cheek, and then he's on his way.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i keep uploading very short chapters. i apologise for this.
> 
> it's just i've always found splitting fics into short chapters is easier for reading (atleast for me).
> 
> thank you for everything.

**Author's Note:**

> edit: the fic has been changed to present tense


End file.
